Past and Present Playlist Challenge
by Boredom's Outlet
Summary: This is a series of oneshot songfics about the BUS team that I'm writing for the Past and Present Playlist challenge. They are vaguely interconnected and are mostly humor, friendship, or romance fics but other genres may be written as well. Multiple pairings and characters.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: This is my first submission to the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. past and present playlist challenge, my first song being a personal favorite of mine, Carry on Wayward Son by Kansas.

* * *

Wayward Son

_Carry on my wayward son_  
_There'll be peace when you are done_  
_Lay your weary head to rest_  
_Don't you cry no more_

Leo Fitz seemed like an open book to most people, but there was one odd habit that he had that almost nobody knew about, one thing that he would do when he thought that he was alone that if his parents found out they would no doubt be ashamed. Leo Fitz was in fact, such a lover of American classic rock music that then there was nobody else around he would sing and dance around to what he thought were some of the best songs ever. Some would say that no true Scotsman would ever sing along to an American song like he did but then again, it wasn't called the no true Scotsman for nothing.

Of course Simmons knew about this, they went to uni together and were flatmates when they went to the academy so even though he tried to not sing when she was around she did once rush into the flat when he was in the middle of the yell from "Dream On" because she thought that he was dying. It was by far the most mortifying experiences of his life thus far but it taught him a very valuable lesson about his singing, do it somewhere you can't be heard. That's why Fitz was here right then, parading about the lab belting out the chorus to what he thought to be one of the best songs ever whilst simultaneously playing air guitar at three AM. The fact that the lab doors were soundproofed and nobody was up at such an ungodly hour probably made him more than a bit careless, which led to-

"Nice pipes, but the air guitar needs work."

"Skye, I didn't notice you come in." Fitz managed to stammer out as Skye made her way through the now open doors to the lab. Depending on how things went in the next minute or two Fitz may have a new most embarrassing moment.

"I figured as much. I mean, imagine my surprise when I walk downstairs to find the source of the weird rhythmic shaking that my bunk's floor is doing to find you prancing around the lab whaling on an imaginary guitar."

"First of all, I do not prance about. Secondly, was the music really so loud that it shook the bus?"

"Really I'm surprised that Ward and May didn't rush down here guns a-blazing the second you turned on the stereo. I sleep like a comatose bear in winter and I woke up because of it if that gives you any idea." Skye explained walking over to the stereo that was still blaring Kansas and turning it off. "So, what's the ultrascott doing up right now having a little jam session?"

"I couldn't sleep and the music helps me blow off steam besides, I like the song."

"Really, I didn't realize that from the screeching that you were doing. Now how does a guy like you find himself liking Kansas?"

"Honestly?"

"No, I want you to lie to me, yes honestly."

"Well, I started listening to it when I was in school because my father hated it." Fitz admitted

"Wow Fitz, I never had you pegged as the rebellious son type. Why'd your dad hate it so much."

"You try growing up in the Scottish highlands as a kid genius who's the son of a farmer that cares about nothing that isn't sheep, football, or independence from England and and a mom who believes that children should be neither seen nor heard and not end up acting out against your parents." Fitz explained, getting progressively angrier the longer he spoke. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to snap at you. Do you remember when we went to the academy and I really started liking that kid Donnie?"

"Yeah, he seemed like a good kid who was corrupted by Quinn."

"Well the reason that I liked him so much wasn't just because he was smart, there are plenty of smart kids there. It's because I saw myself in him. I came to the attention of S.H.I.E.L.D. after I caused a village-wide blackout trying to make a wireless fuse box for my house at the age of fourteen. They came and spoke to my parents and when they said that I could be going to uni for engineering in two years at the very most and that they would be willing to pay if I went to the academy after my father said 'what's that matter to me, he's no use here?' Do you have any idea how that feels Skye? To have a man who you've looked up to for your entire life basically tell say that you're worthless, do you know what that does?"

"I accepted almost immediately afterward, after hearing that, knowing that what I did meant almost nothing to him, I did whatever I could to make it known that I didn't care what he thought about anything I did, I got accepted into uni when I was fifteen, started doing what I wanted to, and when the day rolled around that I was supposed to head off I just up and left. After that things changed, I was finally somewhere my intelligence was admired instead of being told to not be so odd and to not speak at all. I met Simmons too, she was the same age as me and had been recruited by S.H.I.L.E.D. as well and was just as smart if not smarter than I was. We became fast friends, being the only people below the age of majority being headhunted by a secret organization does that to you. When I had known her for two years I finally took her to meet my family, you need to realize that she was and still is my best friend in the entire world and I had visited her house countless times without her ever meeting anybody in my family. During the summer holidays she came around for a visit and do you know what the first thing my father said to me after she left the room was?" Fitz asked angrily.

"What?"

"He said, 'That's one fit bird you managed to pull Leo, it's a shame she's English though.' I the second that Jemma came back I walked right out of that house and I never looked back. It's one thing if you think that what I do isn't important, but if you refuse to be at least civil and respectful to my friends it's a whole different mater."

"Fitz, can I ask you something?" Skye asked, tentative after such a big admission from her friend.

"Anything, pretty much all of it is out in the open now anyway."

"Was it hard, not seeing your family for almost ten years?"

"It was at first but it's been so long that if I did see them today I wouldn't even know what to say to them. I'm so much different than the boy that walked out of the door all those years ago the academy changed me, S.H.I.E.L.D. changed me. Hell, I don't even know if they would recognize me."

"Listen Fitz, as somebody who doesn't know their family those people are important. They may not like what you do now or your decisions but they are the people who raised you and they're a part of you. I'm not talking in the sappy emotional way either, being friends with a genius biologist like Simmons you must know that even if you did different things with them your genes are from those two people and they are directly responsible for you being here right now. Even if you don't find them to be the most agreeable people you need to be thankful for that because I sure am and I know that everybody else on this plane is too."

The two of them talked like this until the morning, Skye encouraging Fitz to do the one thing that he feared and go back to the place he had not seen in nearly a decade. When Agent Ward came down at 6:30 to start his workout he was greeted by a sight that surprised him, his rookie was sitting on the floor of the lab with her back against one of the work tables and her head resting against Fitz's shoulder while Fitz sat in the same position with his head on top of Skye's. For once he decided that she deserved to sleep in. After all she dealt with Fitz's music last night, that guy tried and failed to be surreptitious about it but really he didn't have a sly bone in his body.

* * *

(Three months later)

Standing outside that door, the same door he walked through almost every day for 17 years, for the first time in so long in and of itself was an accomplishment. When Skye heard that their next mission would be in Scotland she gave Fitz one of those knowing looks that she had perfected in for situations like those and after the briefing rushed straight down to the lab to somehow talk him into coming here. Looking furtively around to see if anybody was watching him Fitz knocked quickly on the door, not even sure if anybody is home.

"Just a second, just a second. Hello, what do you-" the woman answering the door trailed off as she opened the door and looked up. She looked the same as she had the last time that he had seen her, a wind beaten face that everybody from the high lands had with bright blue eyes, gnarled hands from working on a farm her entire life, and those same tight curls that she gave to her son. Though she looked the same as she did before he left there was a different air about her than there was when he had last known her, like the entire world had weighed her down and she was still fighting against it and winning, but only just so. "Is that really you Leopold?"

"Hi mum." That was all he said. It was all he could say, but it didn't matter to him or his mother. It didn't matter because Leopold Fitz had finally come home.


	2. You've got a friend in me

A/N: This comes from a song not on the list provided in the contest and is a direct sequel to the first chapter Wayward Son and is based of of You've Got a Friend in Me by Randy Newman from Toy Story

* * *

Skye was sitting in the lab with Simmons when she heard the door to the short bus slam and Fitz stomp up the ramp and through the doors. It had been nearly three hours since he had left and though she was nearly praying that things went well one look at Fitz told Skye that they didn't. He was without his nearly constant boyish grin and instead he looked as if he had been on the receiving end of a very nasty beating, his shoulder slumped, his feet dragged, and his eyes were looking anywhere besides his two closest friends.

"How'd it go?" Simmons asked cheerily, seemingly oblivious to the fact that her best friend in the entire world looked like somebody kicked his pet dog off of a bridge due to the fact that she had not pried her gaze away from a microscope slide of asgardian lung tissue.

"Fine." He answered even though it looked like he was anything but.

"Really, that's fantastic. How were they? Were they like the last time you saw them? Was your village similar? Did anybody in town recognize you?" Simmons looked like she could have gone on with the questions for all day but at that moment put his hand up and did the one thing that Skye in all her time on the BUS never saw. At that exact moment Fitz pleaded, not in the way that children plead their parents for an extra five minutes before they need to go to bed but in the way that a desperate man does when he would rather be anywhere but where he was doing what he was doing.

"Stop. Jemma, please just stop talking for once and listen. It was fine and I don't want to talk about it." With those words Simmons looked up at Fitz, the person who was always there for her, who ate her weird sandwiches, and who at this moment wanted nothing to do with her. Seeing this she did the only thing she could at his hurtful words, she took off running out of the lab in a vain attempt to not let Fitz see her tears.

Not even turning around to look at Simmons Fitz made his way to his work bench and began to fiddle with the pieces of equipment on the table. He sat doing that for a few moments before looking up at Skye and not seeing what he expected, instead of seeing concern or disappointment on her face she was absolutely livid. He had not seen her this angry since the time she was first brought on to the BUS in handcuffs with a burlap sack over her head so she couldn't see anything.

After looking down on him for a second with wild eyes and clenched fists she errupted. "WHAT IN THE HELL WAS THAT FITZ?" She screamed so loudly that he was surprised that all of the glassware in the lab didn't shatter. After her outburst she was still staring at him with her chest heaving from the volume of air that she managed to expel in such a small amount of time. She still had the same wild look in her eyes and it seemed that she wanted a response from him.

"What?" He questioned though he was beginning to feel guilty about what he had said.

"What, What? I'll tell you what. You just made Jemma Simmons, one of the nicest, bravest, and most resilient people I have met not to mention your best friend and basically your family for the past ten years, cry. Besides that, your visit clearly wasn't fine. I may not be as smart as Simmons and I may not have known you for as long but I still can read you like a book now, tell me the truth, what happened when you met your family?" She asked, finally softening a little but near the end of her tirade but she still looked like she would consider throwing him from the window while they were in flight if he didn't start talking right then and there.

With a sigh he started. "Everything seemed fine when I had gotten there, the house and street looked the same as it did the last time I had seen it. I was nervous when I knocked but when my mum opened the door it seemed like everything was exactly the same, she looked, talked, and hell she even smelled the same. The moment she opened the door she recognized me and pulled me into a hug one of those hugs that only a mom can give the ones where they feel like they are squeezing all the love they possibly could into your very bones, you know?" Frankly Skye had no idea what he meant by that but knowing that if he stopped talking he may not ever start talking about it again she merely nodded at him and gestured to continue. "Well she pulled me into the house and something seemed off in some way. I'm not sure how to describe it, it's almost as if there was something else there besides us. When she showed me around it all looked the same but something I couldn't place just felt wrong. I asked her where my dad was because I wanted to reconcile with him you know? I didn't want the last thing that I said to him to be me calling him an 'old fashioned bleeding idiot who couldn't find his own common decency if he was hit over the head with it.' Anyways when I asked her about him she got this look on her face that made it seem like I had just asked to see a serial killer, complete shock. You know why that is?" Fitz managed to ask with a rough, barking laugh that was completely humorless and instead filled with anger and rage.

"Why?" Skye asked, knowing that they were finally getting to the reason that Fitz had snapped.

"She took me up to his room, it was the same room that he had when I lived with them. So she takes me up there and just before she leads me into there she drops the bomb. My own father wouldn't recognize me. You hear that? My dad's going senile!" He yelled the last part, standing up so suddenly that his chair fell to the ground behind him.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry I made you do that. I had no idea." She managed to choke out from the shock that had constricted her throat.

"I know you didn't but that's not the worst. She walks into the room and I have to follow her. As I walk into the room I see him, just lying there with his head rolling about in his pajamas at two in the afternoon. My mum walks up to him and says 'Robert there's somebody here to see you, it's our son Leopold." At this he looks at me but not rally, almost as if he's looking through me and right through the wall behind me. I can tell that he has no idea who I was he just decides to say, to a complete stranger mind you, 'Your son, not mine. That good for nothing failure isn't good for anything besides lazing about in his room all day while I put in work trying to put food on the table.' By that point I was so shocked that I just stood there for a good half-minute without saying anything. I just said 'goodbye mum' and walked out of there, never looking back until I got here. But do you want to know the good thing about all this?" He asked sarcastically.

"What is it?" She responded, paying rapt attention to him standing there looking like a wide-eyed madman.

"At least I now know that my dad always believed what he said about me."

"Listen Fitz, I may not have known you for as long as Coulson or Simmons but I will _Always _with you, if you need help, somebody to talk to, or even just somebody to goof around with, my door is always open and don't forget that for a second. We're team mates and you will always have me if you need me."

"Thank yo, for everything Skye. I really would probably have done something that I regretted even more if you didn't make me talk." Fitz admitted gratefully.

"Hey, what did I just tell you? I'll always be there for you."

Seeing her standing next to him in the lab, talking him through a personal problem again made him realize how true those words were, there may have been people who he knew longer, but he would never have a friend just like Skye so he needed to hold onto her and never let her go. As cheesy as it was to reference Pixar he had to admit that he had a friend in Skye and she had one in him.

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A/N: That turned out a lot more angsty than I expected but I still really like it. Please review.


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